Category: Film

I recently (not really) had the honor of seeing Prince of Persia, a Disney adaptation of a fairly good video game into film, as well as Sky High, a movie with the same name as a craptastic Disney superhero movie. First up, Prince of Persia.

Donnie Darko defies the future again

It was a good try. By itself, it just barely manages to wrap itself up in one movie. However, it’s long and tries too hard to be cool. The reason the original PoP: SoT game was awesome was because it kept to it’s own formula. Jake Gylenhal should’ve had more lines and less acrobatics, though the parkour in this movie is certainly impressive. Also, villain is fairly obvious.

Next up, we have the movie “Sky High”.

Rukia?!

Sky High is essentially what amounts to an attempt to convert Bleach into film form without going to Western Directors or Producers. Asian film for some reason cannot hope to match Western CG and other special effects. Also, the choreography is all over the place. If they’re not smoother and cooler, sword fights should really just be brutal and quick.

[spoiler!] Chick dies at wedding, husband tries to find killer, both find out at roughly the same time, grim reaper decides to kick killer’s ass, gets ass kicked, Chick with husband destroy killer and prevent him from becoming a god, guy becomes alive again, chick becomes rukia grim reaper. This eventually spawns the Bleach series. Probably. Also there was some talk of god vs. science and I went and made a sandwhich. [/spoiler!] wee!

On another note, I also played a game called Split/Second. It took significantly longer than that to find out I suck at driving games.

Because spending millions of dollars for ten minutes of enjoyment is the American way

This game has a story of elaborately setup movie sets being used as racetracks for contestants in a game show competing for a PRIZE. Story aside, it’s a kart game that looks pretty. Similar to Blur, but without the wacky randomness of classic power-ups. In this game you either drift, catch air, or barely avoid hitting your opponents and steal their slipstream in order to build up a meter. This meter either allows you to cause silly explosions all over the track at various intervals, or (assuming you save up to the limit) allows you to destroy half the track in order to kill the poor sods that are your opponents make the track more interesting. That’s about it really. There are various modes, but the core of the game is all the racetracks you go through. Probably gets repetitive after a while. Still, it played smoothly and held together well. The presentation was appropriate after the tutorial level, and the music is fitting, if bland. Graphics of course are fantastic, as is par for the course these days (specifically the explosions). Just once I’d like to see a game come out that is amazing for everything besides it’s graphics.

I had the opportunity while traversing throughout southern Nevada this past week to see both “The Karate Kid” and “The A-Team”, two remakes, one of an old ’60s TV show and one of a film that had Mr. Miyagi in it.

Mr. Miyagi teaches random white boy how to wait tables

They both try to be original in their own ways, however. The original A-Team television show was about a dishonored military squad who would take odd jobs from people who couldn’t turn to anyone else for a solution. Others watching it compared it to the TV show “Leverage” with more explosions. Yeah, sounds pretty al~right. In the new film’s case it’s basically their origin story, which is utterly ridiculous to the point that I wish it was a video game. Liam Neeson, the badass from “Taken”, is the chessmaster leader who plans every ridiculous thing in the movie, which was a pleasant surprise. Of course, it’s a straight up action movie about the team trying to regain their honor after being set-up, and given that the TV show has been around for something like 50 years, we all know how that goes. Or not. Kids these days. They don’t remember their roots!

Roots

The original “Karate Kid” movie was a simple story of a kid learning to man up and kick people’s asses when they were being idiots. Also, he got a car. The new Karate Kid movie focuses less on the ass-kicking and more on “Crowning Moments of Heartwarming”, as TVtropes would put it. The movie primarily focuses on Jaden Smith’s father-son bond with Jackie Chan. Interesting to note, Jaden Smith apparently went full-on with his kung fu training, though I’m unsure if he used a stunt double.

"this is how you take dump in China!"

Still, throughout the movie I was imagining the reactions that several of my friends would have… both hilarious and disheartening that I know such people. We’re all basterds. One thing that I will say, though, is that the actual fight scenes (as opposed to funny training scenes, plot scenes, or Jaden Smith getting gut-punched by angry asian kids) are pretty badass and reasonably authentic. There was also some random asian guy with spiky hair, which we all know is a recipe for success….

spiky hair can be used as a hidden weapon

I’ll probably see A-Team again, but I’ll only do the same with Karate Kid if I can get a bunch of my…. tainted friends to sit down and watch it while I copypasta their hilarious remarks….

innuendo!

Karate Kid gets a 4/5 for beating up African Americans while A-Team gets a 30/5 for having explosions. I wander if Twilight Eclipse will be this good???!!!!!